Book Description

The science of Logic, presented as a game.- Based on the Project Gutenberg text.- New illustrations of logic diagrams.- Color illustrations also readable in black-and-white.

Most electronic transcriptions of this book are unreadable because the ASCII illustrations have become collapsed and jumbled. To remedy this, more than 80 unique illustrations have been created and the format has been corrected for flowable text.

The science of Logic, presented as a game.- Based on the Project Gutenberg text.- New illustrations of logic diagrams.- Color illustrations also readable in black-and-white.

Most electronic transcriptions of this book are unreadable because the ASCII illustrations have become collapsed and jumbled. To remedy this, more than 80 unique illustrations have been created and the format has been corrected for flowable text.

This is a short little text Carroll wrote to introduce children to logical reasoning, specifically set logic of the "Some Cretans are Liars" variety. At the time, it was probably an excellent work for this purpose. There are two reasons why it's not that great a text for that today, though, at least not in this kindle edition.

The first is that Carroll's tone here has aged pretty badly. To begin with, his overall tone is at times painfully precious, in a way that would probably put off any modern child reading this text; beyond that, the examples he chooses are. . curious by modern standards -- for example, the second set of extended examples centers around the two propositions ""All Dragons are uncanny" and "all Scotchmen are canny."

The bigger problem is that the whole mechanism of the book revolves around a square grid diagram that simply doesn't translate in this kindle edition -- it just appears as a set of ||||'s next to each other. Which makes the book's arguments comparatively difficult to follow, for all Carroll's wit and charm.

Those two issues aside, Carroll's text does a good job of explaining basic logical theory in a way that children can understand. But, unfortunately, this edition is more a historical curiosity than it is anything else.

The Kindle version is a great disappointment, due to the flagrant abuse of the formating that is essential to Carrol's presentation. My "for fee" Kindle books do respect formatting and they are a joy. Indeed, when color is not an issue, I prefer Kindle to print (variable font, auto dictionary, search, etc.). Perhaps I am old fashioned, but for me, "for free" does not excuse sloppy performance. This sloppiness carries over to many of the "for free" poetry books as well, rendering them worthless as well.

In my mind, this tarnishes the whole Kindle experience. What is worse, the Amazon reviews (usually a powerful guide to quality or lack thereof) are dragged in as co-conspirators. To wit: The Game of Logic is a delightful book and the print edition certainly deserves several stars. The Kindle edition is a mess, as I and others have explained. Averaging the star ratings for the book with the star ratings for this Kindle edition provides deceptive guidance. I refrain from judging if this deception is intentional or just further sloppiness. I had come to have higher expectations of Amazon and of Kindle Books. This experience is a bit of a thud.

Like most of digital editions the logical diagrams are substituted by tables made of | (pipes) and dashes chars and their relative position is ruined by the proportional font.Without readble diagrams the book is pointless.This is just a copy of txt version of Gutenberg project edition. If they used the html version the text would keep the format of the tables.Amazon does not emphasize or even show the publisher of digital editions making impossible to select a good one, as if all digital editions were equal. This is irresponsible and borderline criminal.

Very interesting and informative, but the diagrams are not included, making it a little hard to interpret, as it leans heavily on the diagrams for explanation. Some can be reconstructed from the description, but it makes it difficult to know if you have understood correctly. But hey - it's free so who can complain!

One of the great injustices of the literary world is that two-bit publishers can take out-of-copyright texts, turn them into inadequate cheap on-demand books, disappoint customers enough to warrant one-star reviews and create the impression that such negative comments are a reflection on the text.

I read the reviews about how poor the Kindle edition was, so decided to buy the print version instead. A humble flick through the book reveals that Carroll's diagrams (rather integral to explaining how to solve the riddles) are pieces of ASCII art that is poorly aligned, and thereby nonsensical and, effectively, useless.

To anyone who wants to experience Carroll's game, in a format that shows great care for the text AND does not make profit for hack publishers, I suggest you check out Project Gutenberg's free options at [...]

An obtuse system of logic , though I cannot fault him for trying to present it , I am spoilt by the modern day truth tables of Wittgenstein so could not learn or understand it. There are several other books that are far more clearer to read

More About the Author

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), the pen name of Oxford mathematician, logician, photographer and author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is famous the world over for his fantastic classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," "Through the Looking Glass," "The Hunting of the Snark," "Jabberwocky," and "Sylvie and Bruno."